


i made a fumbling play for your heart (and the act struck a spark)

by stuckwithminusharry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hogwarts Era, Mutual Pining, Pining, Quidditch, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25587430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckwithminusharry/pseuds/stuckwithminusharry
Summary: Have you figured it out yet? Can you hear the drums?
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 24
Kudos: 116





	i made a fumbling play for your heart (and the act struck a spark)

**Author's Note:**

> Months and months ago my dear friend Emi requested "hbp harry flirting w ginny and being all nervous piney boy abt it" and this is the result. This is also the second Hinny fic of mine that would not exist without her - so everyone say thank you Emi!

_I remember we broke into laughter  
when we saw each other. What was between  
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed  
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run._

Ada Limón, “What I Didn’t Know Before”

He should’ve put the pieces together sooner, because when he woke up she was already there, everywhere, didn’t creep up on him so much as he turned around one day and found he already loved her. Even in Slughorn’s cool, shadowy dungeon it felt like summer more than anything, full-bellied laughter, warm and thundering and pushing through damp earth towards oxygen, the flowery scent, and Ginny that same afternoon, bringing it back to him, her fiery hair catching the sunlight falling through the common room windows. There, too, that flowery scent that would go on to haunt him so soon.

 _You didn’t know, then?_ , Harry wants to shout at the boy from that afternoon. _How could you not know?_

*

This is the beginning and the end of everything: a Saturday afternoon spent shooting through the air like a box of _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes’_ finest pyrotechnics let loose over the Quidditch pitch. By the time Harry’s team hits the ground again, seven pairs of knees buckling under the force of the landing, the sky overhead is flushed and the air vibrating with potential.

“Look out!”

Harry tears his eyes away from her too late and grunts as the Quaffle she’s thrown finds its goal with a dull thud. Ginny claps a hand over her mouth and comes running towards him, half laughing, half mortified, her Quidditch robes fluttering loudly around her as she jogs across the grassy pitch and thunders to a halt in front of him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”, she says and swiftly places her warm hands on either side of his face, examining his cheek, which is rapidly flushing red where the Quaffle made contact. Harry’s stomach drops as she pulls his face towards her, biting her lip.

“I-It’s okay”, he tells her. “I was distracted.”

Ginny gently turns his chin to get a better look at his bruise. Harry can feel her warm breath on his face, can see the freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, the crease between her eyebrows.

“What d’you reckon?”, he asks her, inexplicably out of breath. “Am I finally gonna look cool and daredevilish?”

Ginny breaks into a reluctant grin – Harry feels a rush of pride and relief at her chuckle and the crinkled back of her nose, something eager and insistent that threatens to knock him off his feet.

“’fraid so”, she tells him, as he grins back at her. “I mean, I like your particular shade of goofy, but …”

She lets go of him, a terrible bereavement, and picks up the Quaffle lying in the grass between them, forgotten.

“I meant for you to catch this, anyway. C’mon, Captain, let’s get changed.”

Harry watches her ponytail swing from view, his heart drumming wildly behind his ribcage, his head spinning. He makes a mental note he’s been underestimating Ginny’s throw arm.

_You didn’t know, then? How could you not know?_

_*_

“What _happened_ to you?”, Hermione gasps when they come climbing through the portrait hole together, a thoroughly dismal-looking Ron following close behind.

“I gave him a shiner”, Ginny says with an apologetic grimace in Harry’s direction.

“I don’t mind”, Harry assures them, and weirdly doesn’t. He grins back at her, heart drumming in his chest. “We’ve decided it helps the bad boy image.”

Ginny looks at him over her shoulder as she walks across the common room and falls sideways on an armchair, legs dangling off one side.

“If that consoles you. It suits you, anyway”, she says, considering him with a smirk.

“Well, I trust your opinion”, Harry smiles.

Still, there is that bewildering urge to keep talking, and still, the drums in his chest are swelling, and when Hermione jumps up to take a look at his cheek, Harry tells himself it’s stupid to find it annoying but can’t quite manage to convince himself. Out of the corner of his good eye, he watches as Ginny curls up in her armchair, the last of the sunset warming her already flushed face.

He finally drops on the scarlet sofa in front of the fireplace, cramped between Ron and Hermione, the left side of his face throbbing unpleasantly. When he catches Ginny’s eye, she grins at him, warm and blazing in the half-dark of the common room, and a similarly golden afternoon comes rushing back to him: Slughorn’s dungeon, and then Ginny, brand-new and startling even in all the ways he’s grown to know her, that haunting, flowery scent, and all the time he's let pass since then, all those months spent exchanging jokes like secret handshakes, all those times his heartbeat quickens when he makes her laugh.

_Can’t you tell? Can’t you hear the drums?_

Harry grins back at her. Some inexplicable, new warmth unfurls in his chest, some strange wild joy. He’s going to spend all of this summer submerged in it, all those stolen afternoons on the sunlit castle grounds, those weeks he’s going to learn that he has never felt more extraordinary than when he was at his most ordinary.

_You didn’t know, then? How could you not know?_

*

“You look better!”, she tells him a week later, when she catches him in a hallway before class, the pads of her fingers gently tracing the place where the thin frames of his glasses meet his cheek, where his bruise has faded to purple and yellow, his skin slowly turning back into its usual brown.

Harry stands breathlessly as her fingers slide gently down to his jaw, her face inches from his.

“You know, I really underestimated your throw arm”, he tells her wildly. “It’s quite vicious.”

“Harry”, she tells him sincerely, her warm hand still on his jaw, “that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“All this time I should’ve been afraid of you, and I didn’t even realise.”

“I could kiss you”, she says, beaming. Harry’s heart performs something like a triple backflip with a spin and falls flat on its face.

When he fails to answer, she frowns, though a mischievous glint remains in her eyes. “I didn’t give you a concussion, did I?”

“No, no, I’m fine”, he says quickly. “I can hardly feel it anymore.”

“Right, then”, she says brightly and lets go of him. Harry watches her walk away, fiercely wishing he had a concussion.

“Terrified”, he calls after her, with a mighty leap of courage, his mouth seeming to act on its own accord. Maybe he has a concussion after all, he thinks, his heart wildly drumming in his throat.

Ginny turns and looks at him – it feels like stepping into the summer sun. Harry looks back at her, frozen in place.

_Have you figured it out yet? Can you hear the drums?_

Finally, she grins, face half-quizzical, half-amused, giving way to something quiet and knowing.

“Right”, she says, then: “I’ll see you around, Harry”, and it sounds like a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Typos may be exchanged for cookies at the till. (I'm almost certain there's at least one.) Comments are appreciated always. Love, Jessie x


End file.
